AnnaPrior

In an era of dubious economic milestones, it was yet another lowlight. This spring, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Americans' total student loan debt ballooned to more than $900 billion -- higher than their total credit card debt. And no wonder the debt is piling up: Over the past two decades, the price of tuition has risen 20 times as fast as the average college grad's wages.

SmartMoney College Rankings

In the last two decades, the cost of college tuition has nearly tripled after accounting for inflation. To see how that investment is paying off at 50 of the country's most expensive schools, SmartMoney looked at two groups of alumni: recent grads, out for three years, and midcareer alums, out 15 years. The Payback Score is an average of those groups' current income, expressed as a percentage of their sticker-price tuition and fees.

Statistics like these help to flesh out a now-familiar message: The cost of college has escalated from unsettling to obscene. College administrators say that the soaring price tags reflect the rising costs of their own biggest expenses -- faculty salaries and state-of-the-art dorms and facilities.

But even insiders acknowledge that it can all become a burden. At Ivy League stalwart Cornell University, for example, four years of full-price tuition and fees approaches $250,000. Faced with a choice between borrowing that much to go to the Ivy school, or getting a more affordable education somewhere else, should an applicant really opt for the six-figure debt load? Says Thomas Keane, the school's director of financial aid: "Please, don't."

Still, families may not mind shelling out such big bucks if the investment pays for itself, and then some, in higher compensation down the road. To help readers make that kind of calculation, SmartMoney offers its annual college survey, a bottom-line approach to the academic experience that doesn't mind imitating the rude uncle at your family reunion -- the one who insists on asking everybody what their salary is. And unlike many of the best-known college rankings, it's a contest where the winners don't always hail from the usual tiny pool of top names.

With help from PayScale, a Seattle-based compensation-data company that maintains 35 million salary profiles, we collected median pay figures for two pools of each school's alums: recent grads (out of school for an average of three years) and midcareer types (an average of 15 years out). For each group, we divided the median alumnus salary by tuition and fees (assuming they paid full price at then-current rates), averaged the results and, finally, converted that result to a percentage figure. The outcome: a measure of return on investment that we've dubbed the Payback Score. For example, a hypothetical alum who spent $100,000 to attend college and now earns $150,000 a year would have a personal score of 150. Just as with the SATs, the higher the score, the better.

It's admittedly a narrowly targeted formula. It doesn't include, for example, financial aid, even as many schools are increasing it -- under pressure from cash-strapped families who have hollered no mas. And the value of an education, of course, can't be measured merely in dollars and cents. But at a time when the average college grad is entering the workforce with $25,250 in debt, it's the kind of calculation that financial advisers say more families are paying attention to.

Public Schools

Avg. Payback Score: 134

Avg. Salary for Recent Grads: $47,790

Avg. Salary for Midcareer Grads: $87,257

Among many folks who fixate on big-name northeastern liberal-arts schools, the Georgia Institute of Technology (a.k.a. Georgia Tech) flies under the reputational radar. Even its president, G.P. Peterson, goes by the unassuming, guy-next-door nickname of "Bud." But based on our Payback Score, the school deserves a higher profile -- and some bragging rights. After all, it's offering the best academic deal in America.

Recent Georgia Tech grads earn $59,000, or a stellar 67% of what they paid in tuition. Grads in their 30s average $102,000 a year, more than three times their 1990s tuition tab. Peterson says those imposing scores are no accident. Virtually all of Georgia Tech's students are focused on science-oriented disciplines, including engineering and computer and software design. Those, of course, are the kinds of fields where the prospects and opportunities have remained strong even in this shaky economy. And then there's the school's status as a public university, which gives it access to taxpayer funds that have subsidized the cost of attendance, especially for in-state students. "We're in a fortunate position," says Peterson.

All of Georgia Tech's neighbors at the top of the heap are also public universities; indeed, state schools have historically dominated our Payback Scorecard, and this year, they hold the top 17 slots. At midcareer, our public school graduates earn less in absolute dollars than their private-college counterparts, but as a proportion of their tuition, they're pulling down 58% more than Ivy grads, and 85% more than alumni of non-Ivy private schools. For many middle- and upper-middle income families, that translates into a lighter economic burden -- all the more important in an economy where salaries for college grads overall have been stagnant.

Kent Chen, of Los Angeles, chose the University of California, Berkeley, over a top private school this spring after he and his parent confronted the price gap between the two -- more than $27,000 a year. Paying higher tuition seems like too much of a risk, says Kent's mother, Yvonne, the chief financial officer at a community bank in Los Angeles, who notes that college in general is an economic gamble these days: "There's a lot of kids graduating right now that can't find good jobs."

There's no guarantee that the Payback math will keep favoring the public colleges in years to come. Many states, coping with budget deficits, have been cutting aid to these institutions, and the schools have had to hike tuition to compensate: Nationwide, public-college tuition for residents is up 120% in the past 10 years. As a result, says Lynn O'Shaughnessy, author of "The College Solution," the assumption that state schools are still always cheaper is "just not true."

At the University of Michigan, one of the lowest-ranking public schools in our Payback survey, out-of-state tuition now tops $30,000 a year, and financial-aid is virtually out of the question for nonresidents. The university explains why: The per-student allocation from the state has shrunk by more than 50% over the past decade. And even our overall winner is coping with the new reality: At Georgia Tech, out-of-state students now pay almost three times as much as they would have a decade ago. But there's a payoff, notes Peterson: 67% of the class of 2012 had jobs lined up by graduation weekend, up from 53% for the class of 2010.

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